Evidence of meeting #67 for Industry, Science and Technology in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was universities.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Co-Founder and Managing Director, Association of University Research Parks Canada
Exactly.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Dan Ruimy
Thank you.
We're going to move on over to Mr. Baylis.
You have seven minutes.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
Thank you.
I would like to start with Dr. Anand Srinivasan.
You had talked about the lack of consistency and the challenges that small companies have in starting to negotiate a contract with one university and then starting the whole process over.
What if there were a template? What if we asked or pushed universities to use a standard template so that you knew when you came to do a licence or purchase what you were dealing with? Say 80% plus was standardized. How would that help?
Technology Lead, EION Inc.
Well, it would definitely reduce the overhead for them. At the moment, overhead can shoot up to 30% or 40%. They are going through the same thing everywhere. Most of the people who are negotiating are not even subject matter experts, so a lot of time is being wasted. That would definitely bring it down.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
Yes, it would alleviate the weight on a small company by having these set templates that they would use.
Technology Lead, EION Inc.
Yes, I agree with you. It should not be an imposition, because then there would be a retaliation. Insert a template or a guideline, things like that, definitely. There should be fields set out beforehand, so that they know what they are getting into.
Liberal
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
Yes.
I'm going to move my question to Mr. Jeremy Auger, but in a slightly different way.
You had mentioned that you have to negotiate twice. You come to a university; you fund the technology; something good comes out of it; and then you find that you jointly own it, but you have the same difficulty of having to renegotiate.
What if they had that template, and you knew going in, because you're partially funding it, that they had to use such a template. What if you knew exactly what you would have to do if something good came out of that research? You would know ahead of time. You would not be stuck thinking that something's great, and then having a greedy person, or some challenges that you have to renegotiate.
How would that help your industry?
Chief Strategy Officer, Desire2Learn Incorporated
I think anything you do to drive upfront transparency of any IP ownership as output is critical. What that lets you do is decide whether you want to do it in the first place. If the IP outcome is not favourable, you'll know that and may decide not to participate. If it is, then you will participate.
We've actually had situations where we've done joint R and D projects, multi-year R and D projects, with grant funding from the NRC and Canadian universities together, where we had those upfront agreements. In the end, because we did jointly implement some products that went to market, they wanted to renegotiate those agreements as well.
I think transparency is great up front. Sticking to it is even better.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
Were they able to renegotiate, or were you able to hold them to what you had?
Chief Strategy Officer, Desire2Learn Incorporated
In part.
We're tough negotiators, but at the end of the day, when you jointly own something, you need to come to a resolution, especially on something like IP.
We see this more so in the U.S. than in Canada, but it's something to look at not doing in Canada. Developing an environment that supports....
Many times, U.S. universities act as patent trolls. Effectively, they are non-practising entities holding large patent portfolios. They will send companies letters saying things like, “Hey, we noticed that you have a product that likely practices one or more of our patents. We are curious if you would like to purchase or license them.”
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
I understand. We don't want to be setting up for patent trolls, for sure.
Coming back to the specifics, more clarity right at the beginning about what you're working with would be beneficial.
Chief Strategy Officer, Desire2Learn Incorporated
It definitely would be, yes. I think it's fair.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
Fair enough.
I'm going to move on now to Dr. Karin Hinzer and Mr. George Dixon.
You both touched on the U.S. model of SBIR. I would like you to elaborate a bit on that. How could you see that helping in tech transfer, specifically?
I'll start with Karin.
Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Photonic Nanostructures and Integrated Devices, University of Ottawa, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, As an Individual
When I worked for an American multinational, it also had a plant in.... I'm going to start with Europe.
George talked about it in his testimony, but really, when I worked for this company, people in my company were paid to do R and D on these large, what were usually multi-country, long-term projects, for which the company was getting support. This was explained by Desire2Learn. This is not our model in Canada. We do not fund R and D employees within companies for any project that is funded by the tri-agency research councils.
SBIRs in the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy, large projects—this is not exactly your question Mr. Baylis, but I just want to allude to it now— allow for the paying of employees in companies. This is what allows companies to grow their R and D departments, or to keep them going while they're developing new products that they can then bring out to the market.
With SBIRs and the ASBTT—
Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Photonic Nanostructures and Integrated Devices, University of Ottawa, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, As an Individual
Yes, the STTRs. What it does is that a company that is either a spin-off from academia or just a spin-off can go out and get funding that pays for all of their R and D.
Liberal
Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Photonic Nanostructures and Integrated Devices, University of Ottawa, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, As an Individual
Yes, exactly.
It's different from what we have. I gave the example of the SDTC, which pays only 30%, so you need to have your investors lined up and already have the proof of concept done, but this allows you.... It's a stage that is a bit earlier, and it doesn't necessarily have to be linked to universities.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
It allows you to get that proof of concept done. It's a funding mechanism that the Americans use to help pull the technology out of the universities and to make it a very easy move, if I could say that.
Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Photonic Nanostructures and Integrated Devices, University of Ottawa, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, As an Individual
It's an easy route, and it's a way to really build your patent portfolio as well, in a certain time frame. We were talking about not having a lot of resources in universities. This is one way to do it.
Vice-President, University Research, University of Waterloo, and U15 Group of Canadian Research Universities
I don't have a lot to add to what Karin has said, but I'm going to speak from the University of Waterloo experience now, because I frankly don't know what goes on in the other institutions.
One of the major issues we arise at is this POP funding. Effectively, one of the roles of a tech transfer office is to take some IP, de-risk it, put a package around it in order to be able to commercialize it and move it out of the university, and to actually do prototyping and proof of concept associated with that IP. The small business technology transfer program in the States has an outstanding track record and ability to effectively achieve that early-stage activity of moving the IP out of the university.
Liberal
Frank Baylis Liberal Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC
They're packaging it so that it can be easily moved out.
Vice-President, University Research, University of Waterloo, and U15 Group of Canadian Research Universities
Package it, de-risk it—